Sid Roth

Sid: I wish you could hear my conversation with my guest before I go on the air it’s so good I say “Stop, we’ve got to say that on the air.” Because my guest this week is Dr. Ray Strand; a Medical Doctor that has for the last what was it 7 years Ray?

Ray:  Eight or nine years.

Sid:  Eight or nine years specialized in nutrition which most MD’s have how much training in medical school?

Ray: Oh, about 10 minutes.  

Sid: (Laughing) Ten minutes! How long does the average big city physician spend with his patient? What’s the average?

Ray:  About 8 minutes.

Sid: Eight minutes; there’s something wrong with this picture.  Let me tell you what you said and I quoted this earlier in the week “That we can’t rely on doctors, we must do our homework; we must become proactive; we can’t be like I used to be like someone that buries his head in the sand and whatever that doctor says is fine.”  Because as you were talking earlier this week about the Federal Drug Administration it’s not quite as pure as it used to be because they rely on money from drug companies to do the testing.  Is that correct?

Ray: Well not only that, yeah you’re correct on that Sid, on half of the budget the FDA comes from the pharmaceutical industry that they’re supposed to be policing.  And the sad thing is that the FDA is under a lot of pressure at the present time by Congress and obviously if you’re paying the bill to FDA you want your drugs approved quicker and more frequently.

Sid: And not only that, every time I turn on the television I see an advertisement.  I’ve never see this before.  It’s almost epidemic; another advertisement pushing a drug.

Ray:  Well isn’t that amazing that they’re advertising prescription drugs, the only way that you can get it is from your doctor. And my first gut reaction when I saw that was “Why are they doing that?” Well, the study show that Sid that when that patient comes in and asks for that specific drug 90% of the time he walks out with that script in his hands. And the pharmaceutical industry knows that and so that’s the pressure that they put on doctors.

Sid: So you doctors are dependent on the pharmaceutical industry to test the drug? You are dependent on them to make you knowledgeable of it. And you’re now going to be dependent on it for them selling it for you.

Ray:  Well, that’s correct there’s a lot of pressure when someone comes in and say “I want this particular pill or that one” and we’re willing to oblige them.  And even though doctors like to take a high road and say “We should look at third party information and all of this medical information.”  The reality is they don’t spend all of this money by the pharmaceutical industry sending in all of these drug reps into our office if they weren’t effective.

Sid: I have to ask you a question.  Is there any as an MD that is a Christian; I’ve always been curious about this.  “Is there any ulterior motive for a particular doctor to prescribe a specific drug?”  Do they get any benefit that you’re aware of?

Ray:  Sid, I know I get asked that question a lot and the answer to that is a simple, “No.”

Sid: Good. (Laughing)

Ray:  Other than maybe a free lunch or something you know that they’re talking…

Sid: But someone’s life is dependent on giving the right medicine.

Ray:  Well doctors aren’t prescribing basically the wrong medicine; we just have so many choices now. I mean you look at the blood pressure medication we probably have 100 different medications we could prescribe.

Sid: Well speaking of blood pressure, speaking of back problems, and different pain in the body.  I’ll tell you one of my frustrations.  I know that God is a healer; I know that He can heal anything.  When I pray for people and when the people that are grossly overweight that have back problems God does a miracle, He’s so gracious, He heals them.  But then that problem comes back because of the cause of the back problem was that they were grossly overweight.  Or I pray for someone with high blood pressure and God causes a miracle to happen but then in your opinion why does that high blood pressure come back?

Ray:  Well people do not know there’s physical and biological laws that occur in the way that we treat our body and how we try to take care of this temple of the Holy Spirit. And what is happening is that people abuse themselves. Maybe knowingly and unknowingly and the Christians are probably worse than any group out there. And so what happens is everybody can have a healing from the Lord or a miracle. And then they go back to these old abusive lifestyles and people… what is it?  Well, we don’t exercise, we don’t move that body, we get into a carbohydrate addiction, we’re stuck on this high glycemic carbohydrates. But you know Sid there are good fats, there are good proteins, and there are good carbs. People simple need to know what they are and they need to eat them because our body needs them, that’ s the way God created them.

Sid: Now you say in your book that heart problems are not caused by high cholesterol, but that’s the main number that an MD looks at and if your number isn’t right they give you a drug. What do you mean by that statement?

Ray: Well what we are finding out, and this is something I’ve known and have been teaching and talking about for the last 9 years. Heart is not a disease of cholesterol it’s an inflammatory disease.  It’s caused by low grade inflammation of that artery.  And the healing that’s supposed to be trying to occur from the immune system actually gets carried away and this inflammation continues. So over half of the people that actually have heart attacks Sid have normal cholesterol levels and so what happens is that people are convinced that it’s just too much cholesterol in our bloodstream that’s building up and that’s what the pharmaceutical industry wants you to believe.  But as you keep lowering and lowering cholesterol it’s not the answer.  In fact LDL, you know the bad cholesterol the bad cholesterol everybody talks about?

Sid: Right.

Ray:  It is not bad as native cholesterol it only becomes bad once it becomes changed or modified by these excessive what we call free radicals or that charged oxygen molecule. And then it can cause this inflammation.  So yeah…

Sid: So, what good is the medication based on what you’ve just told me?

Ray:  Well I don’t believe it’s really all that important if people knew that they are doing. Because if you really understand you know there are several different causes of inflammation. But now that we’re hearing more about inflammation is that what they’re finding out is that the drugs like Lipitor or Zocor that lower cholesterol they also decrease inflammation in that artery. So the pharmaceutical industry now is starting to let this information out so you’re going to read a lot about inflammation, not only as a cause of heart disease but Alzheimer dementia, cancer, of arthritis of all of this.  And so we are going to hear more and more…

Sid: I mean we’re hearing so much about Alzheimer’s right now.

Ray:  Right.

Sid: You’re saying that this is one of the major causes? I’ve never heard this before.

Ray:  Oh yes.

Sid: I thought they said that they didn’t even know the cause of Alzheimer’s.

Ray:  They know the cause, they just don’t know how to prevent it or what to do.

Sid: But your book says they you know preventive for Alzheimer’s.

Ray:  Oh yes.

Sid: I mean, you’re saying so casually so many people are suffering from this or going to suffer from this.

Ray:  Well the problem is it’s like in medicine what happens Sid is that doctors diagnose much of our disease at the very end stage.  For example, when we just heard just various people like Michael J. Fox who has Parkinson’s disease.  You know that he knows that 80% of the brain cells were already gone by the time we diagnosed it.  Well, the same thing happened when President Reagan you know when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s which we first diagnosed him 80% of the brain cells involved were already damaged.

Sid: So all the medicine in the world short of a miracle of God couldn’t have helped him.

Ray:  Right. So what happens is we have to prevent these diseases and the way you prevent them at the core of the cause. Which is oxidated stress which is the dark side of oxygen or we’re rusting inside…

Sid: Which I promised we’d talk about, I’m glad you got there.

Ray:  And that is even though oxygen is essential for life itself it’s almost inherently dangerous for our existence. And so what we’re finding is over 70 of these chronic degenerative diseases are the result of what I call the oxygen or that we’re rusting inside. The same process that changes a cut apple to brown or rust metal is rusting us inside.  I can explain that process. The simplest way that I can explain it Sid is that if you’re watching a home fire burn 95% of the time it burns just fine but occasionally there’s a spark and out comes a cinder and burns a little whole in the carpet. Well, that’s not a big deal but month after month and year after year you got a pretty ratty carpet right in front of your fireplace. And so what you have to realize is that cinder is like a charged oxygen molecule or a free radical. But the carpet is our body so whatever our body wears out first is what kind of a disease we end up with.  If it’s a brain it could be Alzheimer’s, dementia or Parkinson’s, if it’s the joints you could get arthritis, if it’s the arteries you could have a heart attack or a stroke. But God did not leave us defenseless, what we have is a tremendous anti-oxygen defense system which is like the glass doors of the fine wire mesh that you put in front of the fireplace.  And even though the sparks are still going to fly you’re body or carpet is protected. And so it all becomes a matter of balance and so that’s my book “What Your Doctor Doesn’t Know About Nutritional Medicine.”

Sid: That’s such a tragedy, I mean we go to our doctors for help, they want to help us why don’t they… why didn’t you understand this for most of your career as a medical doctor?

Ray:  Well, because I wasn’t trained in it.  I wasn’t trained in preventing disease; I was trained in treating pretty serious end stage disease with my drugs, surgery, and all of our procedures we do. That’s the way doctors work; we’re not trained in preventing disease. We don’t know anything about it. And I was just a typical doctor and now when we talk about preventive medicine in like HMO’s and stuff like that; are you going to your doctor what are they doing Sid?  They’re just looking for early signs of silent disease or disease.  We want to know is that cholesterol up, is your blood pressure up, do you have silent sigs of diabetes

Sid: And you know I don’t take…personally I don’t take medicine.  However I do take vitamins and herbs and when I talk with you you just said “Sid you just go on this diet and take the right small number of vitamin and herbs but by going on this diet and exercising you don’t even need some of those herbs that are supposed to lower your cholesterol, that are supposed to lower your blood pressure.  I wish… oh we’re out of time, Mishpochah.